HuffPost Canada TV | By Chris Jancelewicz Posted: 05/01/2013 3:09 pm EDT | Updated: 05/01/2013 3:43 pm EDT With the latest American version of "The Amazing Race" approaching the finish line, Canadians are thirsting for the promised Canadian iteration. Since auditions closed at the end of February, we haven't heard a peep about the show.

Until now.

During Sunday's second-last episode of "Amazing Race" Season 22 on CTV, there was a brief commercial for "Amazing Race Canada." All it said was: "Mondays, This Summer on CTV." Very cryptic, CTV, very cryptic.

Thousands of Canadians across the country auditioned for the show, sending in humourous videos and showing off why they should represent their towns and provinces on the Race. Here at HuffPost Canada, we got an interesting selection sent to us as well. Whichever contestants were chosen, we're sure they'll be entertaining.

No host has been announced thus far, but we'll keep you posted as soon as it happens. Keep your eyes peeled during the "Amazing Race" finale this Sunday at 8 p.m. on CTV -- we're betting that another announcement will be made (but that's just a guess).

Contestants taking part in the Amazing Race Canada dashed through Niagara Falls Friday filming for an episode of the upcoming reality series.

Production company staff revealed little, saying they didn’t want to reveal the show’s content before it airs. The same official asked no photos be taken at the Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory, where filing had wrapped up.

The show, a Canadian version of the perennial Emmy Award winner for Best Reality Series, will air this summer on the CTV television network.

The format of the series will pit teams of two in a race across Canada. The number of teams competing and the grand prize have not been announced by CTV.

It looked like The Amazing Race. It sounded like The Amazing Race. But no one would confirm it was The Amazing Race filming down by the Falls Friday morning.

“We have no comment on what went on here today,” said a member of the crew as she was packing up her gear. And while other crew members were friendly, none would say whether it was The Amazing Race – Canadian edition – filming near Oakes Garden Theatre.

But seasoned fans of the show know the drill: Teams of two people line up, get the clues to their route, then bolt for their vehicles – in this case, brightly-coloured cars which had been parked nearby overnight.

Friday morning, several Twitter users started posting photos of the set-up along the Parkway, just outside The Secret Garden restaurant.

“Amazing Race Canada just started in Niagara Falls,” Tweeted former resident Kim MacDonald.

Mike Ditizio said he was “95%” sure he watched The Amazing Race “being filmed from my work window right now! Pretty awesome to witness.”

Secret Garden server George Firth filmed the start of the race on his phone, as contestants ran towards their cars. Tweets later in the day indicated the teams were at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

“Nobody knew about it,” said Firth, who said crew members guarded the cars overnight. “You didn’t see (the players) until today.”

While he couldn’t identify any of the players (CTV has yet to announce the cast), Firth said there was at least one “set of hot twins.”

The show’s Wikipedia page said the starting line for the race would be in Niagara Falls, with a visit to the Butterfly Conservatory also mentioned for Friday.

Niagara Parks spokesperson Tony Baldinelli said staff signed confidentiality agreements forbidding them from identifying what show was being filmed.

The Amazing Race Canada is expected to air this summer, and is based on the Emmy-winning U.S. version currently airing its 22nd edition. While the U.S. version frequently has teams jaunting around the world, the Canadian version will take place entirely in Canada. Destinations won’t be revealed until each broadcast.

It will mark the 12th international version of the show.

Firth says the hubbub was over quickly Friday. The teams grabbed their backpacks and were gone within ten minutes. By noon, some tourists had no clue the show was even there.

Firth says it was better than most movie shoots along the Parkway, which can tie up traffic and disrupt schedules.

“Sometimes, they can be more of a pain.

Logged

"I enjoy reading because I enjoy following adventures if fictional characters and it escapes me to another world."

Amazing Race Canada expected to visit Regina MondayRoughriders calling on fans to come to Mosaic for a 'travel adventure show'

Reported by CJME staffFirst Posted: May 13, 2013 6:41am

"The Amazing Race Canada" will be touching down in Regina on Monday

Fans of the show have been tracking the Canadian version of the popular reality TV series as competitors travel across the country. There are several reports that teams will arrive on an Air Canada flight from Calgary around 8:30 a.m.

Six identical SUVs are lined up at the airport, and over at Mosaic Stadium, the Roughriders are telling fans to come down this morning to be the backdrop for a "travel adventure show" that is filming in town.

CTV published - then deleted - a story on their website on the weekend saying the race would also take contestants to the Legislative Building.

The yellow and red route markers might have gone unnoticed by many people in Regina on Monday – but not by Amazing Race fans.

They knew the markers seen around town – at Regina International Airport, at city hall and at Mosaic Stadium – meant that competitors of television’s Amazing Race Canada had descended on the Queen City.

“I have been trying to catch them, but it’s been hard. Someone told me they were coming here so we kind of took a personal day off to come here,” said Kelsey McDonald, who snapped a photograph of herself with a route marker at the stadium.

“This is my whole Amazing Race day.”

The Saskatchewan Roughriders had posted a Facebook message to their 130,000 followers on May 2 about a “travel adventure show” filming at the stadium on Monday, and had asked fans to come wearing their green and white beginning at 10 a.m. and until as late as 5 p.m.

“I’m a giant Rider fan and was like, any reason to go and sit in the sun at the stadium … we all love The Amazing Race,” said Stefanie Ward, who sat in the stands with three friends, all decked out in Riders gear — watermelon helmets included.

Fans cheered on cheerleaders and a few Riders players as they filmed a scene for the show with rumoured host and Canadian Olympic gold medalist Jon Montgomery. Meanwhile, an obstacle course of sorts was on the football field.

Other sightings around the city, according to Regina fans, included Ukrainian dancing in front of city hall and contestants rushing through the airport.

The filming of Amazing Race Canada began on May 3. The reality program will air on Monday nights on CTV starting on July 15.

CTV has not released many details of the show or identified its host, though the network confirmed last week that the prize for the winning team is $250,000, free worldwide trips for a year with Air Canada and two 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingrays. CTV did not return a call from Metro News to comment or to confirm the show’s filming in Regina.

“The prize is valued at 167,224 hockey pucks, 178,572 cans of beer, and 33,356 half-litre jars of pure Canadian maple syrup,” a release dated May 6 says on the CTV website.

The prize might just be perfect for rumoured show host and classic beer-chugger Jon Montgomery.

Logged

I really wish we could stay longer in the countries we visit, but I've been lucky to have visited most of them before, because I've done a tremendous amount of travel. - Phil Keoghan

Fans catalogue ‘Amazing Race Canada’ spoilers before it starts airing on July 15

Michael Oliveira, The Canadian Press May 29, 2013 11:18:14 AM

0ShareTORONTO – “Amazing Race Canada” doesn’t premiere until July 15 but some of the reality series’ fans already know all kinds of top-secret details about the show, including the identity of its host, some of the contestants, and where they’ve been racing across the country.

There are hundreds of posts and more than 23,000 views for a thread at the Reality Fan Forum, which has crowdsourced a play-by-play of the reality competition in near real-time, based on sightings of the show’s production that criss-crossed the country.

The reports started trickling in about a month ago as the teams were first spotted in Niagara Falls, Ont. and it didn’t take long for Twitter to be flooded with tweets and photos of the filming.

Some of the more devoted fans made it their mission to scour social media channels for any references to the race and aggregate them on the forum. They even cross-referenced those sightings against flight schedules to try to predict where teams would head next.

Among the web sleuths is Corey Waldner, who decided to seek out the show’s production in Regina after hearing about a call for extras at Mosaic Stadium.

“I’m a two-hour drive away, I had that day off, so I decided I was going to go check it out,” said Waldner, who had applied to be a competitor on the reality show.

“It was exciting. For me it wasn’t just about seeing the racers, it was seeing the background, seeing how the production crew actually puts something like this together.”

He sat in the stadium as the show’s host led some of the teams through a competition, but he also tailed one of the duos after spotting them at the airport. He was surprised how easy it was to tag along with the racers.

“They had vehicles parked at the airport, and big flags out, so everybody knew what was happening, and I parked right beside those cars and just stood nonchalantly watching. And as soon as the last team started to leave the airport I just hopped in my car and started following along,” he said, noting that team didn’t speed excessively or zig zag in traffic to catch up to the other teams.

“They were signalling, which I was quite pleased to see. That probably tipped them off that they weren’t from Saskatchewan, because we don’t tend to signal. They were pretty easy to follow until I got caught at a red light and they didn’t.”

In downtown Quebec City, Erik Bolduc also thought it’d be fun to follow one of the teams when he stumbled upon the show’s production crew, who claimed they were actually shooting a travel series called “Marathon.”

“I came across a team of two guys with backpacks and they were with a sound guy and camera man, so I knew right away it was the ‘Amazing Race’ and I decided to follow them,” said Bolduc, who tracked the team to the historic Plains of Abraham, where a competition was staged.

“I would’ve followed them on to the end of the leg but I couldn’t since I was with my baby, but it was very exciting to be there and to follow them a while.”

Bolduc posted a couple of videos online that were found by members of the Reality Fan Forum, who tried to convince him to look for the teams the following day at a local airport.

“There are people a lot more motivated than I am,” he said, noting he turned down the request at first.

“But I’m kind of crazy too because the next morning … I was crazy enough to go to the airport and see if they were there.”

CTV declined to talk about the fans tracking the show’s progress. But in a recent interview with the show’s executive producer, John Brunton, he said he wasn’t overly concerned about spoilers getting out online. While many secrets have been revealed, he’s convinced the winners won’t be known until the final broadcast.

“When you get to the mat with (the host) and the teams meet after certain legs of the race, generally we’re in a pretty remote place, we’re in a pretty privately controlled place. So the results of who comes in and when, we think we can protect,” Brunton said.

“We’re thinking about it but I’m not obsessing about it … If they talk about you, it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, it’s good for the show. So we hope social media goes insane with the program and gets all tied up in knots about it. “

TORONTO -- Contestants on "The Amazing Race Canada" were unanimously excited when informed that the show would be hosted by Olympic gold medallist Jon Montgomery -- once they realized who he was, that is."Were they like who? Who? The beer guy?" Montgomery asks.Well, actually, yes.But the flame-haired 34-year-old has no issue with the fact that he's still best-known to Canadians not for hurtling to a surprise gold medal in men's skeleton at the 2010 Vancouver Games, but for how he celebrated afterward: gleefully marching through a crowd of elated Canucks while chugging a pitcher of beer."If I could pick between being known as an Olympic gold medallist or the beer guy, I would pick the beer guy," Montgomery said in a recent interview -- his words tumbling out at Olympic speed -- before again revisiting the circumstances of his golden day."That lady that was kind enough to hand me a pitcher of beer, it was like she was angelic, there was this aura about her and ... I was so thirsty at that moment in time," he recalled. "As a good old Manitoba boy, you show your appreciation for someone buying you a drink by taking a good hearty swill of it."I think Canadians can't necessarily see themselves flying down a frozen toilet chute on a cafeteria tray with rails head-first at 140 km/h, but Canadians can see themselves celebrating a goal accomplished ... in a uniquely Canadian style with a pitcher of suds. And I think that leant them some access to the moment."It was a marquee moment for Games broadcaster CTV too, so it's not surprising that the network decided upon Montgomery as host of its new flagship, race-around-Canada reality show, which will launch with considerable fanfare on July 15."How he behaved after he won his gold medal was just like a unifying moment where all Canadians said: that dude is Canadian and he's a Canadian hero," said executive producer John Brunton, chairman and CEO of Insight Productions."The way he behaved, it was like he had a Canadian flag tattooed on his forehead. He was Mr. Canada -- he sort of represented a Molson beer commercial in many ways."I don't think he was an obvious choice in any way," Brunton continued. "(But) how can you not love Jon Montgomery? He's a seasoned traveller, he's got balls the size of grapefruits. One of the things that's going to make our show different than the American show is that I think you will find our host more ... physically active and relating to the challenges in a different way."Still, Montgomery is the first to admit he has scant experience in front of the camera, aside from the flurry of interviews and speaking engagements that followed his moment of Olympic glory.So he shies away from comparing himself favourably to Phil Keoghan -- the New Zealander who has hosted the American version of "The Amazing Race" for 22 seasons -- demurring when told of Brunton's praise: "I think it would be a big mistake for me to try and be Phil, because he's so good at what he does that I think I should maybe try to find my own voice. ... He's the master, and maybe, one day, I can get close to being like Phil."In fact, Montgomery says he's not drawing upon his on-camera experiences post-Olympics, but the decade he spent prior to that as a motor-mouthed auto auctioneer."(That) lent itself to being comfortable in front of an audience and being the guy with the microphone, the centre of attention -- and that was probably why I got into auctioneering," he added with a laugh. "I liked being the centre of attention growing up. I was the guy in class who was repeatedly told to sit down, to not talk. 'Jon needs to focus more, he's not getting his work done' -- that kind of deal."But it seems to have worked out OK."One of his other duties as "Amazing Race Canada" host will be to zero in upon the team conflicts that frequently erupt between pairs of stressed-out contestants desperately trying to quickly navigate the myriad obstacles strewn in their way.Sometimes he might simply poke at those fires, sometimes he might have to pour figurative gasoline on them -- anything in service of the viewer, he says."I don't think that I'm going to get in there and try and be a total disturber -- as maybe my role was on the ice when I played hockey growing up," he said."But (will I be) a little bit of an agitator? Maybe. Just asking some appropriate questions to pull some responses out that you might be looking for -- that might make for good television viewing -- I think that that's definitely the role of the host and I'll have to walk that delicate line between being somebody who isn't perceived very well by the public and someone who is perceived as doing a good job in their role of facilitating reactions."Speaking of his on-ice role, Montgomery is still hoping to qualify and represent Canada at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.His hosting duties constitute a challenge for the training-focused Montgomery, who planned on a makeshift workout regimen while on the road -- "Find a parking lot, do some track spring warmups, find a gym where I can find a few free weights, throw them around, get my workout done, get going," he said.While he hopes "The Amazing Race Canada" leads to more opportunities in broadcasting, he's still maintaining focus on the skeleton track. And he knows he has plenty of work ahead if he plans to swig some celebratory suds next winter in Russia."I've got a huge road to hoe to be able to repeat," he said, pointing to 2010 runners-up Martins Dukurs of Latvia and Alexander Tretiakov of Russia as "the two guys everyone's chasing, including myself.""I've got a lot of work to do to narrow that margin between where I am right now and where they're at," he added, noting that he was comfortable playing catch-up for now. "I don't want to go in being the front-runner. That's not something I've ever been before. So it's always easier being the underdog."So yeah, I would definitely welcome going into the 2014 Olympic Games being not the front-runner. And I'm not, so I'm cool with that."